Obama, Spears, CNN & Fox News Suffer in Damaging Twitter Hack

Micro-blogging phenomenon, Twitter, has revealed that 33 of its accounts had been hacked by an individual who had successfully penetrated into the backend online support tool used by Twitter.

The hacker managed to post inappropriate posts on the accounts of some very high profile Twitterers like Rick Sanchez from CNN, Barack Obama, Fox News and Britney Spears. All compromised accounts have now been locked down and control has been handed over to their respective owner.

Twitter came clean shortly after the event and posted a short notice on their blog saying that they "considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline." They also pledge to "put them back only when they are safe and secure", which means that in other words, they were not until the hack happened today.

This latest incident comes a few hours after Twitter users were targeted in a concerted phishing scams where messages were sent to Twitter friends and persuaded them to enter their login details on a bogus website.

This also came a few days after a little known service called Twply (and also behind tweetmanager) that collected hundreds of accounts in one day before being sold for $1200 in an online auction, further highlighting risks associated with managing your credentials online.

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Our Comments

In Michael Arrington's own words, "Twitter is not yet ready for prime time". The company has yet to find a decent revenue stream and two security issues in as many days will certainly make investors slightly uneasy. Sure users are still subscribing to the service en masse, but Twitter will desperately need to settle security concerns before moving on.